How To Make Sure You Have Foundations in Place for an Effective Facebook Advertising Strategy
You see the cute blue button on a Facebook post and you think, “why yes, I WILL just boost this post for five dollars!” While you’re at it, what’s another few dollars? I mean, Facebook sent me the fun little notification telling me this post got some traction already and would do well to be boosted, so that means it’s a good decision, right?
Friends, we’re here to tell you that simply boosting a post or setting up one innocent Facebook ad is simply not enough to succeed with Facebook ads. The more we go down the rabbit hole of possibilities with social ads, the more combinations, intricacies, and complexities you realize there are in this ad space. Now, we’re not going to tell you that hitting “boost” is NEVER a good thing to do. We’ve seen a few instances where it makes sense. But, by and large, there is so much more to social media advertising than just throwing a few dollars to boost your content. In order to have an effective Facebook advertising strategy, you need to have a few core foundations in place.
Start With The Foundations For Facebook Advertising
Before you do any sort of advertising, you absolutely MUST feel confident in the foundations you have in place. There’s no point in sending people to a shoddy looking brand, no matter how good the ad is. Here are a few of the foundations we recommend having in place before you do any sort of Facebook Advertising or social media advertising:
Website: Your brand needs to have a solid presence online and that starts with your website. Your website needs to be a good representation of your brand. Make sure the colors, logos, and tone of the site are consistent with who you are and the advertising you will want to do. Make sure that the products and services you are advertising are mentioned and explained clealry on your site. Remember that your website represents your brand 24/7 and whether someone gets to your website from an ad, or goes and checks out your brand later after seeing an ad, you want it to look top notch!
Landing Page: There are a ton of ways to make a landing page. Some of them include building a page directly within your existing website. Other strategies include building something with another program like Leadpages or similar that just ‘looks’ like it’s built on your main website framework. A landing page is simply the main page you send someone to from an ad, and ideally is one that features the product/service only. Often landing pages will be branded, but not have a big main menu like a typical web page does. The page will feature core features of the advertised item and have clear calls to action. All of this layout and design is done to entice you to purchase.
Good Offer: You can have beautiful artwork, copy, hook, and even landing page, but if your offer sucks, nothing can help that. Don’t be stingy! Many businesses fail at this step because they are not willing to give enough away, or provide an enticing offer. Do you market research to find out if people are actually tempted by your offer. Don’t just ask your employees or your family (they’ll probably just say what you want to hear); ask strangers and others you know will be objective and blunt even!
Pixel Proof: Before you run any ads, make sure you have your Facebook Pixel set up and firing properly. By placing this snippet of code on your website, you can track visitors and use this information for building later audiences. Depending on your long term strategy, some ads may be in place simply to build an audience of interested website visitors to later retarget with other strategic ads. Don’t underestimate the power of a little bit of code. AND, make sure your code is working well throughout the campaign. Sometimes things go glitchy and you need to adjust things to make sure the code is tracking properly.
Whether you are a big fan of simply clicking “boost” or you set up strategic campaigns, your first priority will be to make sure you have the simply foundations in place. Your advertising strategy on Facebook will be much more effective and you will be able to track return on investment much clearer as well!
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